the emperor's lieutenants. It was by arms of a very different nature, that Gallienus endeavoured to protect Italy from the fury of the Germans. He espoused Pipa, the daughter of a king of the Marcomanni, a Stevic tribe, which was often confounded with the Allemanni in their wars and conquests. To the father, as the price of hi alliance, he granted an ample settlement in Pannonia. The native charms of unpolished beauty seem to have fixed the daughter in the affections of the inconstant emperor, and the bands of policy were more firmly connected by those of love. But the haughty prejudice of Rome still refused the name of marriage to the profane mixture of a citizen and a barbarian; and has stigmatized the German princess with the opprobrious title of concubine of Gallienus.†

III. We have already traced the emigration of the Goths from Scandinavia, or at least from Prussia, to the mouth of the Borysthenes, and have followed their victorious arms from the Borysthenes to the Danube. Under the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, the frontier of the last-mentioned river was perpetually infested by the inroads of Germans and Sarmatians; but it was defended by the Romans with more than usual firmness and success. The provinces that were the seat of war recruited the armies of Rome with an inexhaustible supply of hardy soldiers; and more than one of these Illyrian peasants attained the station, and displayed the abilities, of a general. Though flying parties of the barbarians, who incessantly hovered on the banks of the Danube, penetrated sometimes to the confines of Italy and Macedonia, their progress was commonly checked, or their return intercepted, by the imperial lieutenants. But the great stream of the Gothic hostilities was diverted into a very different channel. The Goths, in their new settlement of the Ukraine, soon became masters of the northern coasts of the Euxine: to the south of that inland sea were situated the soft and wealthy provinces of Asia Minor, which possessed all that could attract, and nothing that could resist, a barbarian conqueror.

The banks of the Borysthenes are only sixty miles distant from the narrow entrances of the peninsula of Crim Tartary,

* One of the Victors calls him king of the Marcomanni; the other, of the Germans. See Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. iü, p. 39S, &c. See the lives of Claudius, Aurelian, and Probus, in the Augustan History. It is about half a league in breadth

828

NAVAL EXPEDITIONS

[CH. X known to the ancients under the name of Chersonesus Taurica.* On that inhospitable shore, Euripides, embellishing with exquisite art the tales of antiquity, has placed the scene of one of his most affecting tragedies.† The bloody sacrifices of Diana, the arrival of Orestes and Pylades, and the triumph of virtue and religion over savage fierceness, serve to represent an historical truth, that the Tauri, the original inhabitants of the peninsula, were in some degree reclaimed from their brutal manners, by a gradual intercourse with the Grecian colonies, which settled along the maritime coast. The little kingdom of Bosphorus, whose capital was situated on the straits, through which the Mæotis communicates itself to the Euxine, was composed of degenerate Greeks, and half-civilized barbarians. It subsisted, as an independent state, from the time of the Peloponnesian war, was at last swallowed up by the ambition of Mithridates,§ and, with the rest of his dominions, sunk under the weight of the Roman arms. From the reign of Augustus, the kings of Bosphorus were the humble, but not useless, allies of the empire. By presents, by arms, and by a slight fortification drawn across the isthmus, they effectually guarded against the roving plunderers of Sarmatia, the access of a country, which, from its peculiar situation and convenient harbours, commanded the Euxine sea and Asia Minor.** As long as the sceptre was possessed by a lineal succession of kings, they acquitted themselves of their important charge with vigilance and success. Domestic factions and the fears or private interest of obscure usurpers, who seized on the vacant throne, admitted the Goths into the heart of Bosphorus. With the acquisition of a superfluous waste of fertile soil, the conquerors obtained the com

Genealogical History of the Tartars, p. 598. *M. de Peysonnel, who had been French consul at Caffa, in his Observations sur les Peuples Barbares, qui ont habité les bords du Danube.

Euripides, in Iphigenia in Taurid. [The scene of this ancient tragedy, made more remarkable by recent events, has been well illustrated by Heyne's masterly yet concise sketch of its history, in the third volume of his Opuscula Academica.-SCHREITER.]

Strabo, 1. 7, p. 309. The first kings of Bosphorus were the allies It was reduced by the arms of Agrippa. Orosius, 6, 21. Eutropius, 7, 9. The Romans once advanced within three days' march of the Tanais. Tacit. Annal.

of Athens. § Appian in Mithridat.

12, 17. ** See the Toxaris of Lucian, if we credit the sincerity and the virtues of the Scythian, who relates a great war of his nation against

and of a naval force sufficient to transport their armies to the coast of Asia.* The ships used in the navigation of the Euxine were of a very singular construction. They were slight flat-bottomed barks framed of timber only, without the least mixture of iron, and occasionally covered with a shelving roof, on the appearance of a tempest. In these floating houses, the Goths carelessly trusted themselves to the mercy of an unknown sea, under the conduct of sailors pressed into the service, and whose skill and fidelity were equally suspicious. But the hopes of plunder had banished every idea of danger, and a natural fearlessness of temper supplied in their minds the more rational confidence, which is the just result of knowledge and experience. Warriors of such a daring spirit must have often murmured against the cowardice of their guides, who required the strongest assurances of a settled calm before they would venture to embark, and would scarcely ever be tempted to lose sight of the land. Such, at least, is the practice of the modern Turks; and they are not probably inferior in the art of navigation, to the ancient inhabitants of Bosphorus.

The fleet of the Goths, leaving the coast of Circassia on the left hand, first appeared before Pityus,§ the utmost limits of the Roman provinces; a city provided with a convenient port, and fortified with a strong wall. Here they met with a resistance more obstinate than they had reason to expect from the feeble garrison of a distant fortress. They were repulsed; and their disappointment seemed to diminish the terror of the Gothic name. As long as Successianus, an officer of superior rank and merit, defended that frontier, all their efforts were ineffectual; but as soon as he was removed by Valerian to a more honourable but less important station, they resumed the attack of Pityus; and, by the destruction of that city, obliterated the memory of their former disgrace.T

the kings of Bosphorus. * Zosimus, lib. 1, p. 28. Strab. lib. 11. Tacit. Hist. 3, 47. They were called Camara. See a very natural picture of the Euxine navigation, in the sixteenth letter of Tournefort. § Arrian places the frontier garrison at Dioscurias, or Sebastopolis, forty-four miles to the east of Pityus. The garrison of Phasis consisted in his time of only four hundred foot. See the Periplus of the Euxine. [Pityus is now Pitchinda and Dioscurias, Iskuriah. D'ARville, Géog. Anc. tom. ii. p. 115; tom. i. p. 115.-GUIZOT.]

Zosimus, lib. 1, p. 30.

Circling round the eastern extremity of the Euxine sea, the navigation from Pityus to Trebizond is about three hundred miles.* The course of the Goths carried them in sight of the country of Colchis, so famous by the expedition of the Argonauts; and they even attempted, though without success, to pillage a rich temple at the mouth of the river Phasis. Trebizond, celebrated in the retreat of the ten thousand as an ancient colony of Greeks,t derived its wealth and splendour from the munificence of the Emperor Hadrian, who had constructed an artificial port on a coast left destitute by nature of secure harbours. The city was large and populous; a double enclosure of walls seemed to defy the fury of the Goths, and the usual garrison had been strengthened by a reinforcement of ten thousand men. But there are not any advantages capable of supplying the absence of discipline and vigilance. The numerous garrison of Trebizond, dissolved in riot and luxury, disdained to guard their impregnable fortifications. The Goths soon discovered the supine negligence of the besieged, erected a lofty pile of fascines, ascended the walls in the silence of the night, and entered the defenceless city sword in hand. A general massacre of the people ensued, whilst the affrighted soldiers escaped through the opposite gates of the town. The most holy temples, and the most splendid edifices, were involved in a common destruction. The booty that fell into the hands of the Goths was immense; the wealth of the adjacent countries had been deposited in Trezibond, as in a secure place of refuge. The number of captives was incredible, as the victorious barbarians ranged without opposition through the extensive province of Pontus.§ The rich spoils of Trebizond filled a great fleet of ships that had been found in the port. The robust youth of the sea-coast were chained to the oar; and the Goths, satisfied with the success of their first naval expedition, returned in triumph to their new establishments in the kingdom of Bosphorus.T

The second expedition of the Goths was undertaken with

* Arrian (in Periplo Maris Euxin. p. 130) calls the distance two thousand six hundred and ten stadia. lib. 4, p. 348; edit. Hutchinsou. observation is Tournefort's.

+ Xenophon, Anabasis, Arrian, p. 129. The general § See an epistle of Gregory Thau

maturgus, bishop of Neo-Cæsarea, quoted by Mascou, 5, 87. Zosimus, lib. 1, p. 32, 33.

greater powers of men and ships; but they steered a different course, and, disdaining the exhausted provinces of Pontus, followed the western coast of the Euxine, passed before the wide mouths of the Borysthenes, the Niester, and the Danube, and increasing their fleet by the capture of a great number of fishing-barks, they approached the narrow outlet through which the Euxine sea pours its waters into the Mediterranean, and divides the continents of Europe and Asia. The garrison of Chalcedon was encamped near the temple of Jupiter Urius, on a promontory that commanded the entrance of the strait; and so inconsiderable were the dreaded invasions of the barbarians, that this body of troops surpassed in number the Gothic army. But it was in numbers alone that they surpassed it. They deserted with precipitation their advantageous post, and abandoned the town of Chalcedon, most plentifully stored with arms and money, to the discretion of the conquerors. Whilst they hesitated whether they should prefer the sea or land, Europe or Asia, for the scene of their hostilities, a perfidious fugitive pointed out Nicomedia, once the capital of the kings of Bithynia, as a rich and easy conquest. He guided the march, which was only sixty miles from the camp of Chalcedon,† directed the resistless attack, and partook of the booty; for the Goths had learned sufficient policy to reward the traitor, whom they detested. Nice, Prusa, Apamæa, Cius, cities that had sometimes rivalled, or imitated, the splendour of Nicomedia, were involved in the same calamity, which, in a few weeks, raged without control through the whole province of Bithynia. Three hundred years of peace, enjoyed by the soft inhabitants of Asia, had abolished the exercise of arms, and removed the apprehension of danger. The ancient walls were suffered to moulder away, and all the revenue of the most opulent cities was reserved for the construction of baths, temples, and theatres.§

*

When the city of Cyzicus withstood the utmost effort of Mithridates, it was distinguished by wise laws, a naval With an added preposition, its name has now the form of Is-nikmid, (D'Anville, ii. 23.)-GUIZOT. + Itiner. Hierosolym. p. 572. Wesseling. Now Isnik, Bursa, Mondania, and Ghio, or Kemlik, (D'Anville, ii. 21, 22).—GUIZOT. § Zosimus, lib. 1, p. 32, 33. He besieged the place with four hundred galleys, one hundred and fifty thousand foot, and a numerous cavalry. See Plu tarch in Lucul. Appian in Mithridat. Cicero pro Lege Mauilia, c. 8.